<!--quoteo(post=2044022:date=Dec 11 2012, 03:58 PM:name=Canucck)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Canucck @ Dec 11 2012, 03:58 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2044022"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->A marine with a 50% win rate vs skulks is still a bad marine<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> What's the official win rate? Because mine tends to be pretty good unt- FRAMERATES NO, DON'T LEAVE.
<!--quoteo(post=2044022:date=Dec 11 2012, 11:58 PM:name=Canucck)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Canucck @ Dec 11 2012, 11:58 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2044022"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->A marine with a 50% win rate vs skulks is far from evenly matched... that marine is probably running on <10% accuracy<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You're assuming the marine even got to fire his weapon in the first place.
With camo as it is now marines barely have the chance to turn around, let alone pull their finger on the trigger.
<!--quoteo(post=2044022:date=Dec 11 2012, 03:58 PM:name=Canucck)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Canucck @ Dec 11 2012, 03:58 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2044022"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->A marine with a 50% win rate vs skulks is far from evenly matched... that marine is probably running on <10% accuracy<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
If this is directed at me, then thats not my point. I'm talking about the overall game/loss ratio not win/loss vs a single skulk. From what i've seen in server. I Win most games however im better then Average.
<!--quoteo(post=2044107:date=Dec 11 2012, 05:51 PM:name=grazr)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (grazr @ Dec 11 2012, 05:51 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2044107"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->You're assuming the marine even got to fire his weapon in the first place.
With camo as it is now marines barely have the chance to turn around, let alone pull their finger on the trigger.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Camo isn't a problem, Yes its annoying in the beginning stages. But is easily countered by any marine team with a clue.
On 2 res for most of the game <i>(res node in first hive got killed a few times)</i>
But we got bile bomb and had cloak and it was enough to come back and eventually retake the map although we did lose 4 hives and all of our upgrades once
<!--quoteo(post=2044171:date=Dec 11 2012, 07:14 PM:name=OnosFactory)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (OnosFactory @ Dec 11 2012, 07:14 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2044171"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Reason #1 and reason # 2 .... probably swap those 2 around.
Oh, nezz, than vs then, I don't know if English is innatley common to you but using a language to seem smartassed requires, you know, the language ...<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I didn't anticipate on being a smartass, Maybe your lack of socialization is what makes you think that way? In General im saying i win most games i play. Probably due to playing a more competitive style of NS
OVERALL,. i dont think there's any major imbalances.
<!--quoteo(post=2043768:date=Dec 11 2012, 03:48 PM:name=biz)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (biz @ Dec 11 2012, 03:48 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2043768"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->the game is different when skulks are winning so many fights. when marines are good, they can win 1v1 / 2v2. and with meds they can even take on greater numbers of skulks.
when marines can't aim, they don't win those fights. instead of staying alive long enough to get 3 extractors up, they die before getting one up.
when your team can aim, you can pressure AND build extractors. when you can't aim, you can only choose 1 if you're lucky, but the more likely scenario is failing at both
simple fact is that marines are at a huge disadvantage when aliens get 4 (or more) harvesters uncontested while marines cannot even defend 3, and this happens all the time<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This is how I see pub games go as well. If I kill a marine, I've slowed down the marine economy. If I die, khammander don't care, the alien economy is unaffected (until we run out of eggs). Marines are under more pressure to not die, and marines lose the advantage of range if they get aggressive. Games snowball quite fast for marines, it's usually obvious 2 minutes into the game if the marines are going to lose, whereas it takes longer for the aliens to reach that point.
I've never seen passive pubbers, except for newbies who get confused by the terrible minimaps and keep trying to walk through walls. Pubbers are all about the 'w' key. I usually see them go in the wrong direction and ignore orders to go places all the time, that's not what I consider passive though.
I wonder why the competitive games are weighted toward the aliens.
<!--quoteo(post=2042501:date=Dec 9 2012, 12:52 PM:name=runner)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (runner @ Dec 9 2012, 12:52 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2042501"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->L2Constructively Discuss. The OP puts forward a good argument and you're being an ignorant little b****<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Actually what he put forward is conjecture and hyperbole. Aliens do not have 95% win rate.
<!--quoteo(post=2044222:date=Dec 12 2012, 05:43 AM:name=BootyPoppin)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (BootyPoppin @ Dec 12 2012, 05:43 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2044222"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Actually what he put forward is conjecture and hyperbole. Aliens do not have 95% win rate.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Correction, the OP is ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE based on first hand experience, and on the servers I was playing, 95% is just about right. Further, the reason for the OP was to probe other peoples experience for similar evidence and see if my experience isn't an isolated event.
Aliens are without a doubt easier right now at basically all levels of play. Maybe among the top 5-6 teams in the world it swings a bit back towards even.
I would suggest major reasons for this include the strength of regen in competitive play and crags/powernodes in public play.
In competitive play regen makes it so lerks and fades never have to return to base. This allows for constant pressure at various locations, and amazing sustainability. As a fade if you get shot up all you need to do is go around a corner, wait 10-15 seconds and your back in the fight just like a fresh player, marines can do this too to an extent, but their ability to disengage from a fight is much weaker. It also allows for very strong defensive lerks which are available early in the game, and increases skulks ability to harass rts in a hit and run style, a strong early game tactic.
In pub play crags allow aliens to have hives (and other positions) which are near invulnerable to an unorganized team without arcs, and even worse, a smart team of aliens can just run around the map hitting the various powernodes taking advantage of unorganized marines until they win. The other day I was playing against a pretty decent pub team of marines on docking, we were trying to take locker but they were pusing us back through ball court to generator and we were losing, lost all but 1 onos and a couple gorges.
No problem, we just ran down through courtyard to terminal where we bile bomb/onosd the power down and all their tech structures and won the game within 5 minutes after that. That is a very common occurance in pub play where if the aliens have a few competent gorge players and a good onos or two they just continually attack in different locations until they hit the powernode jackpot. As an occasional commander this tactic is nearly unstoppable in pub play, the only way to stop it is to have multiple competent defensive minded marines who are acting without direction. Theres literally nothing you can do about it short of putting armory walls everywhere, and the gorges will just bile them down anyway.
Marine aiming is so much harder than Aliens. You have to be almost 100% accurate to shoot skulks who are bouncing off the walls but to bite a Marine you just need to be looking in his general direction.
If Marines can't beat Aliens at more than 1:1 ratio then they will simply lose the game because Aliens will control over half of the map.
<!--quoteo(post=2042484:date=Dec 9 2012, 01:52 PM:name=Troubleshooter)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Troubleshooter @ Dec 9 2012, 01:52 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2042484"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->So, two weekends in a row, its been 95% alien wins on UWE official servers.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
[citation needed]
<!--quoteo(post=2044517:date=Dec 12 2012, 02:14 PM:name=Desther)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Desther @ Dec 12 2012, 02:14 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2044517"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Marine aiming is so much harder than Aliens. You have to be almost 100% accurate to shoot skulks who are bouncing off the walls but to bite a Marine you just need to be looking in his general direction.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The LMG takes roughly 3 seconds to empty its clip, meaning in the minimum 1.35 seconds it takes a Skulk to kill the Marine, you can fire nearly 23 bullets into it. It only takes 10 bullets to kill a Skulk, so you have to be roughly 45% accurate. This assumes you don't firing until the exact moment you both are able to attack. Realistically, your "required accuracy" for the magazine is only 20%.
The Skulk has to aim properly or else they're going to suffer the hidden modifier BS that is the Glancing Bite and deal as little as 25 damage to you. Now if the Skulk's aim follows your "just need to be looking in his general direction" tactic, then let's say the Skulk deals nothing but 25s against the Marine... It now takes the Skulk 7 glancing bites to kill you...or over 3 seconds. You can fire and reload your LMG completely in that time.
---
It should be noted to those that modify the Wiki...that the "approximate" fire rate of 0.1 for the Assault Rifle is very, very wrong if my incredibly rudimentary tests in Explore Mode have anything to say about it.
I think the biggest problem is that aliens don't have to commit to building anything at round start, they are free to begin attacking marines from the moment that they spawn. Because of this, marines will ALWAYS come under attack before they have more than 1 or two RTs up, and short of an absolute massacre of perfect shooting from the marines, nothing will prevent the Khammander from grabbing several RTs and second hive without any problems at all.
Moreover, a concentrated push of aliens can all but win the game in the first few minutes as marines need to split up to try and grab resource nodes, where aliens can stick together in one attacking force and kill all the marines piecemeal. This, combined with the insta-win condition of taking down the marine power node at their main base is what makes early game alien aggression so unbelievably strong. Marines HAVE to defend their main and alien players have literally zero incentive to be anywhere else on the map. And even assuming that this early siege fails, and marines manage to move out and secure themselves on the map? So what? Aliens are already entrenched over the vast majority of the space, and will have huge pres and tres advantages over the marines.
The solution is simple. Make alien construction of RTs at least, require a gorge. Doing it with upgrade buildings would probably be overkill.
This would serve two purposes: Doing the early game all-in assault would actually have consequences for the aliens. Doing so would have crippled their economy and prevented them from having the huge res advantage that they can get by doing this now. Furthermore, by forcing one or two players to gorge to get RTs up, the alien attack on early marine base would be smaller and weaker, and would no longer completely force marines to lose all map presence just to stay alive.
To draw the much-reviled comparison to starcraft, think about what happens if a zerg player 6-pools a terran. They either win right there or are economically crippled for the next ten minutes(more than enough times for the Terran to counter-push and win). By contrast, in NS2, all-in attacking the marine base as khara is one of the strongest economic plays because it leaves the khammander free to expand everywhere. Even if every skulk dies without doing much damage, the marines have still lost economy by defending rather than building RTs, and the khara economy is secure.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I think the biggest problem is that aliens don't have to commit to building anything at round start, they are free to begin attacking marines from the moment that they spawn.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
@iyaerP: Correct. Your solution though I'm not sure of. I do think it is possibly better than nothing. However, since you don't want players to be forced to play a certain class, it might be better to just require a alien to be near a harvester for it to be built. It could be a gorge or a skulk even. So long as they are within a specified radius of it.
<!--quoteo(post=2044577:date=Dec 12 2012, 03:41 PM:name=iyaerP)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (iyaerP @ Dec 12 2012, 03:41 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2044577"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I think the biggest problem is that aliens don't have to commit to building anything at round start, they are free to begin attacking marines from the moment that they spawn. Because of this, marines will ALWAYS come under attack before they have more than 1 or two RTs up, and short of an absolute massacre of perfect shooting from the marines, nothing will prevent the Khammander from grabbing several RTs and second hive without any problems at all.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yes this is exactly what is happening, but the solution I'm sure not even the devs have thought about and I'm almost sure that their "fix" will break more than it will actually fix. The problem here is that most marines cannot yet aim well enough because of lack of experience and low framerate. Really good marines can decimate groups of skulks 1v1 and then some in most situations, while in lower level play this is the other way around. The CORRECT solution is helping new marines be able to beat skulks maybe with upgrades like the exosuit which is newb friendly but useless to pro marines. The other big problem is that skulks do not currently scale with skill as well as marines do, as they have no advanced movement mechanic and glancing bites are very forgiving especially in pubs. add skill to skulks, buff newbie marines. Issue fixed.
Marines are rewarded the most for playing like you would believe the Aliens team are meant to play during the early game. Having two or three Marines ignore orders and go Rambo all over the Aliens harvesters will be a lot more effective than you think. This is, of course, assuming you have at least one or two Marines that are dedicated builders.
I would need to agree with those that say the LMG is a very unforgiving weapon. It's either the most deadly gun you've seen in a first person shooter or one of the worst, depending on how pin point accurate you are as a player and, more importantly, what kind of FPS your machine gets.
Basically a crappy frame rate will still let you play an Alien life form just fine as even a sprinting Marine is something you can hit, but you will probably be horrible at Marines trying to hit small fast moving targets. Throw latency into the mix and it just gets worse.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I think the biggest problem is that aliens don't have to commit to building anything at round start, they are free to begin attacking marines from the moment that they spawn. Because of this, marines will ALWAYS come under attack before they have more than 1 or two RTs up, and short of an absolute massacre of perfect shooting from the marines, nothing will prevent the Khammander from grabbing several RTs and second hive without any problems at all.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The alien players don't individually need to commit to building anything but the aliens team quite definitely must commit to building a second hive within the first five minutes. A hive that is weak and easy to kill for even a solo style rambo Marine. You point out the fact they can drop a second hive, but saying they are going to have 'no problems at all' in dropping those things means your Marines are camping instead of pushing or dying instead of killing. Those situations are obviously going to lose the game for you, one way or another. I see people stopping for resource nodes between hives all the time at the start of a round, when they could run just a little farther and be inside a hive camping for a resource node. You can always go back for a node, but after a hive is taken it becomes much harder to retake it. There are usually three to four area's on a map where you need Marines, yet rarely do Marines run straight to those places.
Also, the Aliens are individually much weaker in the HP department than the Marines players and they stay that way the entire game. Just saying that one marine is more than capable of taking down two skulks on paper. Whether or not they can hit the skulks is a completely different ball game.
Comments
What's the official win rate? Because mine tends to be pretty good unt- FRAMERATES NO, DON'T LEAVE.
You're assuming the marine even got to fire his weapon in the first place.
With camo as it is now marines barely have the chance to turn around, let alone pull their finger on the trigger.
If this is directed at me, then thats not my point. I'm talking about the overall game/loss ratio not win/loss vs a single skulk. From what i've seen in server. I Win most games however im better then Average.
With camo as it is now marines barely have the chance to turn around, let alone pull their finger on the trigger.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Camo isn't a problem, Yes its annoying in the beginning stages. But is easily countered by any marine team with a clue.
On 2 res for most of the game <i>(res node in first hive got killed a few times)</i>
But we got bile bomb and had cloak and it was enough to come back and eventually retake the map although we did lose 4 hives and all of our upgrades once
Oh, nezz, than vs then, I don't know if English is innatley common to you but using a language to seem smartassed requires, you know, the language ...
Oh, nezz, than vs then, I don't know if English is innatley common to you but using a language to seem smartassed requires, you know, the language ...<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I didn't anticipate on being a smartass, Maybe your lack of socialization is what makes you think that way? In General im saying i win most games i play. Probably due to playing a more competitive style of NS
OVERALL,. i dont think there's any major imbalances.
Feel free to go thu my posts grammar nazi.
when marines can't aim, they don't win those fights. instead of staying alive long enough to get 3 extractors up, they die before getting one up.
when your team can aim, you can pressure AND build extractors. when you can't aim, you can only choose 1 if you're lucky, but the more likely scenario is failing at both
simple fact is that marines are at a huge disadvantage when aliens get 4 (or more) harvesters uncontested while marines cannot even defend 3, and this happens all the time<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This is how I see pub games go as well. If I kill a marine, I've slowed down the marine economy. If I die, khammander don't care, the alien economy is unaffected (until we run out of eggs). Marines are under more pressure to not die, and marines lose the advantage of range if they get aggressive. Games snowball quite fast for marines, it's usually obvious 2 minutes into the game if the marines are going to lose, whereas it takes longer for the aliens to reach that point.
I've never seen passive pubbers, except for newbies who get confused by the terrible minimaps and keep trying to walk through walls. Pubbers are all about the 'w' key. I usually see them go in the wrong direction and ignore orders to go places all the time, that's not what I consider passive though.
I wonder why the competitive games are weighted toward the aliens.
Actually what he put forward is conjecture and hyperbole. Aliens do not have 95% win rate.
Correction, the OP is ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE based on first hand experience, and on the servers I was playing, 95% is just about right. Further, the reason for the OP was to probe other peoples experience for similar evidence and see if my experience isn't an isolated event.
Try harder.
I would suggest major reasons for this include the strength of regen in competitive play and crags/powernodes in public play.
In competitive play regen makes it so lerks and fades never have to return to base. This allows for constant pressure at various locations, and amazing sustainability. As a fade if you get shot up all you need to do is go around a corner, wait 10-15 seconds and your back in the fight just like a fresh player, marines can do this too to an extent, but their ability to disengage from a fight is much weaker. It also allows for very strong defensive lerks which are available early in the game, and increases skulks ability to harass rts in a hit and run style, a strong early game tactic.
In pub play crags allow aliens to have hives (and other positions) which are near invulnerable to an unorganized team without arcs, and even worse, a smart team of aliens can just run around the map hitting the various powernodes taking advantage of unorganized marines until they win. The other day I was playing against a pretty decent pub team of marines on docking, we were trying to take locker but they were pusing us back through ball court to generator and we were losing, lost all but 1 onos and a couple gorges.
No problem, we just ran down through courtyard to terminal where we bile bomb/onosd the power down and all their tech structures and won the game within 5 minutes after that. That is a very common occurance in pub play where if the aliens have a few competent gorge players and a good onos or two they just continually attack in different locations until they hit the powernode jackpot. As an occasional commander this tactic is nearly unstoppable in pub play, the only way to stop it is to have multiple competent defensive minded marines who are acting without direction. Theres literally nothing you can do about it short of putting armory walls everywhere, and the gorges will just bile them down anyway.
If Marines can't beat Aliens at more than 1:1 ratio then they will simply lose the game because Aliens will control over half of the map.
[citation needed]
<!--quoteo(post=2044517:date=Dec 12 2012, 02:14 PM:name=Desther)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Desther @ Dec 12 2012, 02:14 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2044517"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Marine aiming is so much harder than Aliens. You have to be almost 100% accurate to shoot skulks who are bouncing off the walls but to bite a Marine you just need to be looking in his general direction.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The LMG takes roughly 3 seconds to empty its clip, meaning in the minimum 1.35 seconds it takes a Skulk to kill the Marine, you can fire nearly 23 bullets into it. It only takes 10 bullets to kill a Skulk, so you have to be roughly 45% accurate. This assumes you don't firing until the exact moment you both are able to attack. Realistically, your "required accuracy" for the magazine is only 20%.
The Skulk has to aim properly or else they're going to suffer the hidden modifier BS that is the Glancing Bite and deal as little as 25 damage to you. Now if the Skulk's aim follows your "just need to be looking in his general direction" tactic, then let's say the Skulk deals nothing but 25s against the Marine... It now takes the Skulk 7 glancing bites to kill you...or over 3 seconds. You can fire and reload your LMG completely in that time.
---
It should be noted to those that modify the Wiki...that the "approximate" fire rate of 0.1 for the Assault Rifle is very, very wrong if my incredibly rudimentary tests in Explore Mode have anything to say about it.
Moreover, a concentrated push of aliens can all but win the game in the first few minutes as marines need to split up to try and grab resource nodes, where aliens can stick together in one attacking force and kill all the marines piecemeal. This, combined with the insta-win condition of taking down the marine power node at their main base is what makes early game alien aggression so unbelievably strong. Marines HAVE to defend their main and alien players have literally zero incentive to be anywhere else on the map. And even assuming that this early siege fails, and marines manage to move out and secure themselves on the map? So what? Aliens are already entrenched over the vast majority of the space, and will have huge pres and tres advantages over the marines.
The solution is simple. Make alien construction of RTs at least, require a gorge. Doing it with upgrade buildings would probably be overkill.
This would serve two purposes: Doing the early game all-in assault would actually have consequences for the aliens. Doing so would have crippled their economy and prevented them from having the huge res advantage that they can get by doing this now. Furthermore, by forcing one or two players to gorge to get RTs up, the alien attack on early marine base would be smaller and weaker, and would no longer completely force marines to lose all map presence just to stay alive.
To draw the much-reviled comparison to starcraft, think about what happens if a zerg player 6-pools a terran. They either win right there or are economically crippled for the next ten minutes(more than enough times for the Terran to counter-push and win). By contrast, in NS2, all-in attacking the marine base as khara is one of the strongest economic plays because it leaves the khammander free to expand everywhere. Even if every skulk dies without doing much damage, the marines have still lost economy by defending rather than building RTs, and the khara economy is secure.
@iyaerP: Correct. Your solution though I'm not sure of. I do think it is possibly better than nothing. However, since you don't want players to be forced to play a certain class, it might be better to just require a alien to be near a harvester for it to be built. It could be a gorge or a skulk even. So long as they are within a specified radius of it.
Yes this is exactly what is happening, but the solution I'm sure not even the devs have thought about and I'm almost sure that their "fix" will break more than it will actually fix. The problem here is that most marines cannot yet aim well enough because of lack of experience and low framerate. Really good marines can decimate groups of skulks 1v1 and then some in most situations, while in lower level play this is the other way around. The CORRECT solution is helping new marines be able to beat skulks maybe with upgrades like the exosuit which is newb friendly but useless to pro marines. The other big problem is that skulks do not currently scale with skill as well as marines do, as they have no advanced movement mechanic and glancing bites are very forgiving especially in pubs. add skill to skulks, buff newbie marines. Issue fixed.
I would need to agree with those that say the LMG is a very unforgiving weapon. It's either the most deadly gun you've seen in a first person shooter or one of the worst, depending on how pin point accurate you are as a player and, more importantly, what kind of FPS your machine gets.
Basically a crappy frame rate will still let you play an Alien life form just fine as even a sprinting Marine is something you can hit, but you will probably be horrible at Marines trying to hit small fast moving targets. Throw latency into the mix and it just gets worse.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I think the biggest problem is that aliens don't have to commit to building anything at round start, they are free to begin attacking marines from the moment that they spawn. Because of this, marines will ALWAYS come under attack before they have more than 1 or two RTs up, and short of an absolute massacre of perfect shooting from the marines, nothing will prevent the Khammander from grabbing several RTs and second hive without any problems at all.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The alien players don't individually need to commit to building anything but the aliens team quite definitely must commit to building a second hive within the first five minutes. A hive that is weak and easy to kill for even a solo style rambo Marine. You point out the fact they can drop a second hive, but saying they are going to have 'no problems at all' in dropping those things means your Marines are camping instead of pushing or dying instead of killing. Those situations are obviously going to lose the game for you, one way or another. I see people stopping for resource nodes between hives all the time at the start of a round, when they could run just a little farther and be inside a hive camping for a resource node. You can always go back for a node, but after a hive is taken it becomes much harder to retake it. There are usually three to four area's on a map where you need Marines, yet rarely do Marines run straight to those places.
Also, the Aliens are individually much weaker in the HP department than the Marines players and they stay that way the entire game. Just saying that one marine is more than capable of taking down two skulks on paper. Whether or not they can hit the skulks is a completely different ball game.